Posted on 05/24/2012 7:30:35 PM PDT by DogByte6RER
When I served in the army in Germany 59-62, the atomic cannon was a common site during field exercises. We weren’t allowed up close but I saw it at least 5 separate times being moved(no easy fete)about Graf or Hoenfels.
Oops, post #21 site should be sight. Need to proof read my comments.
Are you talking about the M65 Atomic Cannon? Only 20 units were produced. I’m suprised that it was a common sight. it was retired in 1963.
Yep, talking about the one and the same. It was already slated to be retired when I entered the army and I think there were only two units in Germany at the time but we saw them almost every time we went to the field. Quite a sight indeed and the truck they hauled them around was hard to handle.
The W54 warhead with a yeild of 18 tons of TNT was small for a nuclear weapons, but still 4 to 5 times more powerful than the Oklahoma City bomb in 1995.
The M65 fired some pretty powerful nuclear shells.
W33 mod.1 Y1 = .05 KT
W33 mod.1 Y2 = 40 KT
W33 Mod.1 Y3 = 10 KT
W33 Mod.1 Y4 = 5 KT
For comparison:
Little Boy(dropped on Hiroshima) = 16 KT
Fat man (dropped on Nagasaki) = 21 KT
Speaking of CW era, this is something I saw at a reenactment called a Williams Repeating Cannon used by the confederates. This is a replica. Apparently maybe a half dozen or so were made or so I read. I slapped this together. The owner really liked it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-3Fsjf1iwE
Largest caliber gun ever?
That’s easy - Obama’s mouth.
Its a shame that for most people trying to access that PM link results in slow page loading while all the advertising popups and browser tracking cookies get lined up tracing your email and shopping info.
Its interesting to know this info but the link fails to deliver. I would rather see a condensed version of cut and paste post by any FReeper.
Nice try! My dad gave me model of the Atomic Cannon when I was about six. One of my favorite toys.
Nice film. Thanks!
I’ve heard comments that they broke up the display. I was there during that record breaking 22 inch snowfall. Just couldn’t get around although I enjoyed the indoor museum right down to seeing Dr. Atwater (sp?) who is on video saying M-16 bullets swelled in the chamber causing the right to jam. Otherwise I’m sure he is a weapons wiz.
May not be large cal. but NASA has a gun that fires .50 cal at 23,500 fps! Seen it with my own two eyes.
What’s up with that little double barreled .45 ACP?
They make even smaller derringers that fire .45 Long Colt or .410 shells.
Someone was not doing their homework!
OTOH, sometimes caliber isn’t as impressive as...
> The projectile was the first human-made object to reach the stratosphere. The historian Adam Hochschild put it this way: “It took about three minutes for each giant shell to cover the distance to the city, climbing to an altitude of 25 miles (40 km) at the top of its trajectory. This was by far the highest point ever reached by a man-made object, so high that gunners, in calculating where the shells would land, had to take into account the rotation of the Earth. For the first time in warfare, deadly projectiles rained down on civilians from the stratosphere”. This reduced drag from air resistance, allowing the shell to achieve a range of over 130 kilometres (81 mi). The Paris Gun was the largest gun built at the time, but it was surpassed by the Schwerer Gustav of World War 2. This fired shells up to 70 times heavier, but with only around half the muzzle velocity and less than one third the range. [from “Paris Cannon” wiki entry regarding the WWI German terror weapon designed by Fritz Rausenberger at Krupp]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Gun
Colossal German Cannon Shells Paris From 75 Miles AwayGerald Bull was fascinated by the Paris Kanonen, coauthored a book about it, and developed some of the same ideas in his prototype for shell-launched orbital satellites. Ultimately non-feasible, it could still fire a shell into space, on a sub-orbital trajectory. Here's a larger format of the gun, showing Bull's barrel extension.
Space cannon blasts into 1960's space raceHere's a small format shot, showing the cannon being fired, appears to have been colorized using crayons:
There Is A Giant Space Gun Rusting Away In Barbados
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